There is a serious issue with this one, one that I doubt most people have discovered yet, but they will. I had quite the saga tonight, not fun.

So I went to install the Alpha 11 over my old Alpha 8, and made one minor mistake that turned into a major one, which along with some newfound bugs, almost screwed me for good. That mistake was accidentally putting the consumer image on instead of the developer one.

I then added a couple of songs via emplode and, as it does almost every single time with all the Alpha 3s, Emplode crashed at the end of the sync. That ever going to get fixed? Anyway it screwed up the database again this time so the Empeg builds the database every time it boots up. So because I put the consumer image on, I can't hyperterminal into the shell to fix it.

Which brings me to bug number two, the major one: the upgrader no longer works when Alpha 11 is already on the Empeg. It always times out now. using Emplode 2.0 or 2.1 makes no difference. Once you have an Alpha 11 on, you have it for life apparently. I tried changing the timing of when I start the upgrade process but it doesn't seem to matter.

So anyway, I couldn't fix the database because I couldn't shell, I couldn't change to the developer image, and Emplode won't run anymore because it always errors when checking the database (bug number 3). I was about to cry.

So after tearing my hair out for a while, I went back to Emplode 2.0, and it was able to fix the database. So at least it works now, but I still have the consumer version of Alpha 11 on there and there doesn't seem much I can do about it.

Oh, and yes, as someone mentioned in another thread, I can confirm that serial Emplode does not work with Alpha 11. I sense a pattern with serial issues, anything to do with this "switching to 4800 baud" weirdness I saw when attempting to Hyperterm in?

So if you haven't installed Alpha 11, it would probably be a good idea not to, or else you may never be able to get it off again. Maybe it's just the consumer image that has this serial bug, but I suspect not.

I can't help thinking that you must have something else going on. The serial upgrader code is in protected flash and will not have been replaced during the alpha 11 upgrade.

So it sounds like you are having other issues with your serial connection that are likely not caused by alpha 11.

Has anyone else had any serious issues with this build?

I was looking forward to tinkering!

Can't be happening. The bootloader is protected (as mentioned) and runs before ANY firmware happens to get loaded or run.

If you use the factory upgrader program and actually turn the unit off until it says, I'll bet it will work.

Do you have hijack installed? You should be able to use Mark's upgrader as well if you do.

Don't stress. I really doubt you are that far up the creek.

Also, without a bootloader the main firmware won't even run either. The bootloader is not just for upgrading. It's always the very first bit of code to run when the empeg restarts or turns on.

That's the whole purpose of a bootloader. It's code that doesn't change so you can always recover if something happens to the main firmware.

"Switching to 4800" sounds like your player thinks it's in the car. If it does think this, then that would also explain why you can't upgrade it - if the player thinks it's in the car, it doesn't pause in the protected bootrom to see if anyone wants to upgrade it (to make in-car bootups faster).

Do you have a bootlog you can post?

Hugo

Do you have Hijack installed? If so, can you use the ethernet kernel upgrader? I can't remember the last time I upgraded via serial (in fact, I only have DB9 out on one machine anymore, and it's my mythtv box).

-- Gary F.